Sabrina Carpenter Is America’s Newest Pop Superstar

In the summer of 1982, a rocker from Indiana was finally breaking on the charts after years of trying anything for a hit. Born John Mellencamp, he marketed himself, reluctantly, under his manager’s preferred sobriquet, John Cougar. After about three years of singles that meandered around the middle of Billboard’s Hot 100, the hit that finally got Cougar into the Top 10, “Hurts So Good,” was undeniable: both a heartland rocker and a danceable bop at the same time. With its center-of-the-bullseye melody and cheeky S&M-adjacent lyrics, “Hurts So Good” had the makings of a Song of the Summer. But even as Cougar’s LP American Fool hit No. 1 on the album chart, in July ’82 “Hurts” got stuck at No. 2 on the Hot 100, behind even bigger hot-weather hits by Survivor and the Human League.